The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. MIT is dedicated to providing its students with an education that combines rigorous academic study and the excitement of discovery with the support and intellectual stimulation of a diverse campus community. We seek to develop in each member of the MIT community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind.
The Institute admitted its first students in 1865, four years after the approval of its founding charter. The opening marked the culmination of an extended effort by William Barton Rogers, a distinguished natural scientist, to establish a new kind of independent educational institution relevant to an increasingly industrialized America. Rogers stressed the pragmatic and practicable. He believed that professional competence is best fostered by coupling teaching and research and by focusing attention on real-world problems. Toward this end, he pioneered the development of the teaching laboratory.
Today MIT is a world-class educational institution. Teaching and research—with relevance to the practical world as a guiding principle—continue to be its primary purpose. MIT is independent, coeducational, and privately endowed. Its five schools and one college encompass numerous academic departments, divisions, and degree-granting programs, as well as interdisciplinary centers, laboratories, and programs whose work cuts across traditional departmental boundaries.
A hurricane that wreaked havoc from Louisiana to New York City, the Texas freeze and devastating western wildfires topped NOAA’s list of billion-dollar disasters in 2021.
People navigate cities in much the same way animals navigate their environments.
Max Böhme/Unsplash
Carlo Ratti, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
As you’re walking through city streets on your way to work, school or appointments, you probably feel like you’re taking the most efficient route. Thanks to evolution, you’re probably not.
Gedung bertingkat tersamar kabut polusi udara di Jakarta.
Antara/M Risyal Hidayat
Tanpa upaya serius memangkas polusi, produktivitas listrik dari energi surya kurang optimal sehingga dapat merugikan pengguna dan pemerintah.
Temperatures in normally warm Texas plunged into the teens in February 2021, knocking out power for a population unaccustomed to cold, with deadly consequences.
Thomas Shea / AFP via Getty Images
Technology innovation is one of the Biden administration’s most powerful tools for accelerating progress on climate change. Recent successes in renewable energy and batteries show how this can work.
La digitalización y la complejidad del tiempo presente, y futuro, exigen que repensemos la regulación en relación a la tecnología y se evalúe si necesitamos nuevos derechos digitales.
Black exhaust fumes from lorry envelope a motorcyclist and his passenger on a busy road in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
EPA-EFE/Daniel Irungu
Earth’s magnetic field locks information into lava as it cools into rock. Millions of years later, scientists can decipher this magnetic data to build geologic timelines and maps.
A car that was washed away floats close to the banks of the Jukskei River in Alexandra Township after floodwaters ravaged the area on November 10, 2016.
Gulshan Khan/AFP via Getty Images
Investment advisers who passed a licensing exam with more ethics questions were one-fourth less likely to engage in misconduct than those with less ethics training, according to a new study.
A murmuration of starlings over West Pier in Brighton England.
Lois GoBe/Shutterstock.com
Harriet Ritvo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Acclimatization societies believed that animals could fill the gaps of a deficient environment.
This artist’s impression shows a view of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system.
ESO/M. Kornmesser
Beyond the outer edge of the Solar System, mysterious, unknown worlds await by the thousands. Astronomers can now finally find them and explore them - but will we find another Earth?
Virtually all megaprojects are urban in nature and location.
jamesteohart/Shutterstock